Ringing Round-up

-A quick update on our recent ringing activities…..

We’ve had a few days off from ringing during the festive period, but with only a few days left of the year – we’re now back out catching & ringing.

Over the last few days we’ve made trips to Lake Windermere, Southport Marine Lake & Crompton Lodges – mainly ringing wildfowl and gulls.

At Windermere we caught 14 Black Headed Gull & 1 control (above). Plus a new species to be ringed at Windermere – a Common Gull!

Meanwhile today at Southport the thaw seems to have set in (at last!) and we continued with the good run of Coots, catching 30 new birds & recapping 2. Whilst Ciaran concentrated on catching Tufted Duck (9 caught), I also caught & darvic’d 10 Mute Swan for the North West Swan Study.

Finally - during two days at Crompton Lodges we caught 31 new Coot & recapped 5, which had colour rings fitted…

Thanks to Ciaran, Craig, Sam Bayley & Callum Hatsell for their help during the last few days…..

Gull Grabbing.

I was dropping Ciaran off in Preston this afternoon, so we decided we’d take a quick look at the docks for Black Headed Gull rings. When we arrived we were greeted by lots of gulls which were eager to have a feed before they went off to roost. It was obvious the gulls were going to be easy to catch, so we decided to catch a few…. after 1hr 30mins of catching/ringing, a few turned into 41 new birds & 1 control – that of a Norwegian ringed bird!

For any ring readers at Preston Docks, or birders who are going to see the Iceland Gull, who maybe interested in giving ring reading a go. All the rings start with – EX541**. All the juvs were ringed on the left leg, the reason for this is because there is a Danish ringed juvy, ringed on the right leg & it'll allow Ciaran to easily pick this bird out, and hopefully read the full ring code.

At last....a visit to Windermere!

With two of the four members of the ''Windermere Ringing Team'' now working & studying in other parts of the UK, we find it hard arranging visits there. However this week has found us all up in the North - so over a few pints during a meet up in Preston on Tuesday night (which later turned into a night out in Blackpool!), we decided to have a trip up to the Lake District this weekend.

I've been delivering cannon-nets to Dumfries this weekend and so I decided to make a weekend of it and stayed with some friends. So I left early this morning to meet up with Craig, Chris and Ciaran at Bowness-on-Windermere for 10am.

Bowness on Windermere - Mute Swan, Canada Goose and Black Headed Gulls caught and ringed.

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Then onto the river in Ambleside catching a Dipper & finding two nests with incubating females (hopefully we'll get the chance to return to ring the pulli)

Quickly rescuing Chris before he is swept downstream!

With the help from us he eventually found his feet!

Then onto catching Canada Geese in a field at Rayrigg, where Craig pulled off the most impressive Canada Goose catch I've ever seen :-)

You had to be there to see it!

All in all a very good day out in the Lakes.........

Ring reading in Ireland.

Just back from spending the weekend in Ireland with Chris Bridge. Mostly a birding trip as Chris wanted to search for Forsters Tern and Ring-Billed Gull around Galway. You can read a report on Chris' blog which should be uploaded in the next few days.

So Friday morning found us in Galway City harbour and after seeing the above birds, we happened to bump into a nice chap called Michael Davis. Michael was taking photos of Black Headed Gull rings and as we helped him to read an Icelandic ring (575839) he invited us to have a look in a big ring bind folder that he had. This was full of A4 paper, each with the heading of a different country and listed beneath were the ringing information for all the gull rings he'd read. To name a few, he'd read rings from - Iceland, Norway, Finland, Sweden, Belgium as well as UK ringed birds.

He flicked through to the ''Iceland'' page and was able to tell us that 575839 was ringed on 26/06/2007 at Breidabolstadir and first seen in Galway on 15/10/2007. Amongst the ringing information on this page were familiar Icelandic names such as Sverrir Thortensen and Olafur Torfason!!

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Before leaving Galway on Saturday we had another go at ring reading and managed to read EL59494 (UK). This bird was ringed on 14/6/2005 at Kingsbury Water Park,Warwickshire.

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Next we were off to Dublin to join in, in the Trad Fest celebrations.......and the morning after, with sore heads we dragged ourselves to Phoniex Park and read a Black Headed Gull darvic ring - Yellow 228G. Thanks to Chris Benson for the ringing information on this bird, it was ringed as a pullus on 02/06/2009 at Lough Mask in County Mayo and ours was the first sighting since then.

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A good grabbing day!

Today we started our monthly ringing trips up to Lake Windermere in the Lake District. So Myself, Craig, Ciaran and new trainee ringer John Wright had an early start, as we started at first light trying to catch Meadow Pipits. We climbed up to the highest point of Windermere and were treated with cracking views of the Lake & a very smart sunrise! We also were treated with a handfull of Meadow Pipits - 6.

After packing up we decided to call into the river at Ambleside and managed to trap a new Dipper.

After dinner we decided it was time to call into Bowness on Windermere to try our luck with wildfowl and luck we were in!! The first bird to be caught and processed was another (hand caught, coming to bread!) female Goosander.

Which made John & a crowed of around 50 members of the public.....very happy.

Then onto catching Tufted Ducks - that were also coming to bread!!! Four caught...

Along with two Coot

One retrap + 1 control Black Headed gull.

10 Canada Geese & 1 Mute Swan also ringed.

Black Headed gulls.

Finally, after months and months of planning - we were issued with licences to sail over to the islands on a Reservoir in Cumbria to ring young Black Headed gulls. It is reported that during the breeding season - the island holds between 1000 - 2000 pairs of Black Headed gulls.

A very happy Craig and Steve on leaving the island!

226 young Black Headed gulls ringed.


Many thanks to the following people who have helped us with advice, gaining access and ringing the birds- Cath Ferguson (British Waterways), Jez Blackburn & Sam Birch (BTO), Fred Gould, Peter Lawson, Robin Sellers, Stephen Christmas, Craig Brookes, Ciaran Hatsall and Chris Bridge.

End of a busy week!

A total of 31 birds caught this week, 30 new and 1 retrap.

This includes (Garden) - 10 new Starling (See earlier post), 1 Wood pigeon, 2 Goldfinch and 1 Greenfinch.

Then a fly in visit to Lake Windermere on Saturday, catching 17 birds - 16 new and 1 retrap. After sweeping up all the unringed Mute swan (7) our attention was turned to the tame Black Headed gulls (Unusually tame for this time of the year!!) resulting in 5 birds being caught by hand. This allowed us close up views of these birds in their stunning breeding plumage. Several Jackdaw were also showing an interest in the food provided, not as tame as the Black Headed gulls but one sneaky Jackdaw came close allowing one sneaky ringer to grab it ;-)

Other birds caught and ringed include 3 Mallard (1 retrap) and 1 Canada goose.

And finally, no matter what time of the year it is, Lake Windermere is a fantastic place to promote bird ringing. Being one of the most visited places in the Lake District, it allows us to demonstrate to the public how important ringing is and why we carry it out.



Thanks to - Emily Scragg, Craig Brookes, Chris Bridge and Ciaran Hatsall.